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16

STAR

Cin had done plenty of weird shit in her life, plenty of gross shit too, so I felt comfortable leaving her in the clearing as she lived out of a tent to make sure that no one approached the men while they were in their ‘appetizer’ phase.

I had to figure that having their faces gnawed off would induce exsanguination, but I hoped it didn’t. I hoped they suffered for days. I hoped that it lingered and that they had to endure an abbreviated but still living hell before they were delivered to the real deal.

Maybe someday, we’d be neighbors down below and we’d have to enjoy Conor-inspired spiky-butt stuff from Satan himself, but that wasn’t my today or my tomorrow—unlike them.

“You were put through the wringer, weren’t you?”

I blinked at Troy’s remark, thoughts of what had just happened stalling at her question. “You think I started all of this for shits and giggles?” My gaze turned distant as I watched Conor fulfill the plebeian task of loading our SUV with gas.

How did the man make that hot?

“Never know with you, Star, never know why you do the things that you do.”

“Like you can judge,” I retorted, preferring to watch Conor’s butt than deal with this conversation.

“Not judging. Just… I’d probably have been nicer to you when you showed up at my house if I didn’t think you were staging some kind of intervention.”

I had to laugh. “You need more than an intervention, Troy.”

“Don’t we fucking all,” she grumbled.

“I don’t show up to interventions with SMGs either.”

She rubbed tiredly at her eyes. “You think he was lying about your mom?”

“Of course he was. Saw her body. They can make deep fakes now, but not back then.”

“Deep fake corpses… a new low.”

“In a century that challenges new lows,” I concurred.

“Still. Has to hurt.”

“You grow a heart while you were raising my cousin, Troy?”

“Apparently. There are ways to tamper with bodies,” she said hesitantly.

“I was always a maudlin kid. When she died, Dad didn’t want me to see her. He tried to keep me away from the funeral home?—”

“But your stubborn ass didn’t listen.”

I shook my head. “Of course not. Savannah…” I paused. “You don’t know her. But she’s the daughter of?—”

“Star, I’m pretty sure you think that I live under a rock, but I don’t. I know who your folks are, and I know noxxious. Ergo Savannah Daniels is on my radar.

"Plus, I was impressed by that TVGM shitshow she orchestrated. The second I saw her deal with that asswipe on breakfast TV, I figured that she grew up with you.”

God, I hated how open my past was.

Fucking fame.

Still, I had to smirk.

Some days, I wasn’t sure if Savannah had rubbed off on me or if it was the opposite.

“Guessing you know Camden then,” I mocked.

“Lyra’s a big fan.”

The smile that curved my lips was painful in how large it was. “She and Kat have something in common then. She considers him her soul mate.”

“Weird kid.”

Proud, I nodded. “The weirdest. She’s mine.”

“How did that happen anyway?”

“Same way you got yours.”

She stilled. “Katina is Bogdan Belyaev’s daughter?”

“She is. That’s why I get what you’re going through with Lyra and I’ll never let my grandfather take her away from you, because I’d make what I did to Smythe and Foundry back there seem like child’s play if someone even thought about taking Kat away from me.”

“Funny how two women who should never have been mothers are so protective of the cubs in their fold,” she mused, but her tone was loaded with her approval at my idea of punishment.

“I think it makes perfect sense. Who better to know how shit the world is and with the skill set to keep them safe from it?”

“True.”

“I’d do anything to make sure she never goes through even an inch of what I have.”

“Same.” She cleared her throat. “I appreciate you saying that though. It… concerns me.”

“Understandable.” With my eyes locked on Conor’s ass, I asked, “Who was your partner?”

“In Ohio? Useless piece of shit. Shot him myself afterward. Was worth getting an extra year added to my sentence.”

Typical Troy. “Who was he? A hacker?”

“I could hack better than him. His name was Dazzy.”

My brow puckered. “Never heard of him.”

“Not surprised. He was useless. I swear, half the trouble I got into in Ohio was his fault. Still, when I picked up Lyra, she stole my heart. Dazzy had to die. Didn’t matter if he was hot shit at hacking or a pile of crap. To save her, he had to go.”

If I’d needed proof of how much Troy loved her daughter, I had it. “How did you get out of Jorgmundgander?” was all I said.

“You don’t. You finish your time, know that they could call you up at any moment, and you deal with it. It helps that I’m not as good of a shot as I used to be because of my eye.” She grunted. “You can tell he doesn’t do this often, can’t you?”

I had to laugh.

Conor was taking an inordinately long time in filling up the SUV’s tank.

“Hates driving.”

“That’s why you made him take the wheel?”

My lips twitched. “It’s good to do things you hate sometimes.”

She snickered. “Life lessons according to Mrs. Lodestar.”

“I should have been a teacher,” I agreed.

A scoff was her only answer to that. Then… “You know who Belyaev was?”

I cast her a glance. Her expression was hidden by the depths of the backseat, but her tone was ominous, to say the least. “Conor looked into him. Said he was a front. You know differently?”

“He was a front. In a sense.”

“Meaning?”

“Remember the Romanovs?”

“I have a preteen daughter, Troy. I’ve seen Anastasia .”

“Yeah, well, good thing, seeing as Belyaev believed he was a direct descendant of the Romanovs.”

I hooted out a laugh. “So, he was a stoner, then?”

She chuckled with me. “Whatever we think, he believed it and he had others believing it too. He was a nasty fucker though. I wished I’d gotten his hit. Your…” Her tone sobered. “Your uncle seemed decent. It didn’t make sense that he was a Sparrow in all honesty.”

“Because he wasn’t. He was there for me. My grandfather told me that he was friends with Belyaev. Aleks knew that Belyaev had killed his wife and used that as a bargaining chip to further his ties with the Sparrows so they could find me.”

“Interesting.”

“Fascinating,” I drawled.

She hitched a shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Thanks for lying,” I mocked, but I was smiling. ‘Adapt and overcome.’ I hadn’t been a Marine, but I lived by their motto.

"Weird that they'd be friends though," she mumbled out loud.

"No weirder than you and me being friends." I grabbed the bottle of juice Conor had brought with him and took a sip. “So, who was Belyaev and how do you know when Conor could barely find anything about him?”

“Because Jorgmundgander gave us his profile but in the aftermath, they tended to wipe their targets’ slates clean.”

“Why?”

“Easier to pretend they never existed that way. Jorgmundgander’s MO is skeevy as fuck. They make the CIA appear friendly. They don’t just kill someone; they eradicate them. Every part of their lives.”

At her long pause, I frowned. “Wait… Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“That you were probably dumped into the sex slave business because of your ties to your mother? Yeah. That your dad probably got dealt some shitty coke or something to kill him, yup. They go in and they clean up after themselves.

“You probably only lived as long as you did without interacting with them because of your dad’s status.”

“Fuck.”

“About sums it up,” she agreed. “If your grandfather and uncle were looking for you, that’s probably why you were impossible to find. That you were a commodity the Sparrows could use undoubtedly worked in your favor and stopped them from killing you outright. If you consider living to be a benefit, that is.”

We shared a glance. Snorted. Returned to staring straight ahead.

“Until Kat, I didn’t. After, now , with Conor, I’m even gladder to be alive.”

She hummed. “Never took you for a fool in love.”

“It gets us all,” I mocked. “So, Belyaev…”

“He was the key player in sourcing the women in the Baltics.”

“Didn’t stop them from having a steady stream once he was dead.”

“Course not. They shoved his younger sister’s husband in the hole he left behind, but he had a lot of power and his replacement didn’t.

“As I said, he had others believing he was a Romanov too. Where he was from, at any rate. It was why they took their daughters to him—they thought he’d give them a better life.”

“Bastard.”

“Yup. The dream career of most women in Russia is prostitution.”

“Bullshit.”

“Nope. You ask around on the ground, and it is. That’s what poverty and years under a communist dictatorship do to you. The families would pay him to help their daughters find work if you can believe that.”

“Didn’t they question shit if they never heard from their kid again?”

“The ones with families became brides. The ones who were on their own became slaves.

"The brides went with average middle-class Americans, and to people in the Baltics, that’s practically luxury living. Why wouldn’t they spread the news that Belyaev had the means of giving their children better lives?”

My brain whirred with the new information that wasn’t new . Alessa, Kat’s sister, had been on her own when she’d become a slave, whereas her mom, who’d left Alessa and her own mother behind, had become a bride.

I thought about Amara, another victim of this heinous market Belyaev and his ilk had exploited. “Why were some kidnapped?”

“Easy marks, of course.” The duh was silent.

“Belyaev must have had an empire by the time he died.”

“I think that’s why they wanted him gone. Ya know, stop him before he got too big for his britches. If he was feeding Kuznetsov intel, that probably didn’t help matters.” She sniffed. "All supposition though. Finding out why these bastards do what they do is next to impossible."

“Understatement.”

“Yup.”

The driver’s door opened and Conor hopped in behind the wheel, bringing with him the scent of oranges.

It was refreshing.

Freeing, almost .

It took me away from the truth of the moment and made me think, instead, of good times.

Better times.

“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”

“How do you know witches have cold tits?”

“On the behalf of all witches, I’m annoyed,” Troy concurred.

Conor grunted. “It’s a saying.”

“In which part of the world?”

“My world. Witches can be men too. Now, who’s being sexist?”

“They’re warlocks. Wizards if you’re a Harry Potter fan. Which,” I tacked on before he could speak, “knowing you, you are.”

“I prefer Star Wars .”

“What does one have to do with the other?”

“If you know, you know,” he taunted. “Anyway, witch, warlock, or wizard, ever heard of man boobs?”

“I’ve heard of them. Surprised you have.” Especially when I thought of his pecs.

“I was chubby as a kid.”

“No way.”

“I lived on my computer and hacked into NASA for fun, Star,” he drawled. “I didn’t play outside much because I knew what the boogeyman looked like and I was addicted to video games. What about that sounded healthy?”

“Why did you hack into NASA?” Troy queried. “They have none of the good stuff.”

“Everyone’s a fucking critic. I was curious, okay? And it got me into more shit than it was worth,” he groused.

“He’s on a watch list,” I explained to Troy.

“Aren’t we all?”

“In this car, sure,” I demurred.

“Which agency?”

“NSA,” Conor grumbled.

“Hardcore.” She sounded impressed. “Takes a lot to get them involved. Normally, it’s the Feds. What happened?”

As he started the engine, he tossed something in my lap. I hid a smile when I felt the shape of a couple Pixy Stix.

“What’s with him and feeding you candy all the damn time? And aren’t you going to offer me one?”

“None of your business and no.”

Conor chuckled, but once he’d pulled out of the gas station, he headed onto the highway, explaining, “The first time was for kudos. The second time was to access a satellite.”

“Moronic move.”

“He knows it was.”

“Been paying for it ever since,” he mumbled. “Heading to Russia was my first trip out of the States in years.”

“Once the Sparrows are dealt with, we’ll get my grandfather to negotiate on your behalf with the NSA. Might as well use his influence while we can.”

“While he’s still alive, you mean?”

I hitched a shoulder. “People die around me.”

“You have to make everything about you,” Troy grumbled. “People die. Period. It’s not always about us.”

“Fuck off. Are you trying to tell me that people don’t have a higher likelihood of dying in our vicinity?”

“Sure, but that’s usually because they’re marks!”

“ Ergo ,” I mocked, “people die around us. It’s not about ego, just statistics.”

Conor chuckled. “You have a plenty big ego.”

I elbowed him in the side as I tore open a Pixy Stix and sank back the hit of pure glucose. “Like you don’t.”

“I’m proud of mine. Nothing to be ashamed of when I have you around to keep it in check. We just need to get yours back under control. Ya know, so you don’t run off thinking the whole world will stop turning if you’re not involved.”

I took the hit, but when Troy hooted at his comment, I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t that funny, Elena .”

Pulling a face and opening up another Pixy Stix, I nearly choked on the dust when Troy slapped me on the shoulder, joking, “More like hilarious because it’s fucking true. You never could delegate. Wasn’t that nearly always on your reports?”

As I coughed my guts out on a hit of glucose, Conor peered at Troy. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. She’s always been shit at sharing jobs. I used to think it was that ego of hers, but it’s more that she’s a control freak.”

“I have high standards,” I said with a sniff.

“The highest,” Troy agreed. “Even if it fucks you over.”

Ugh. “True.”

“Remember that job in Bangladesh?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled.

“Which job?” Conor inquired. And I just knew he was regretting starting our journey at the prospect of story time.

“Lodestar had to get in and out of a privatized hospital that was specifically for high-ranking officials of the government. She needed to move fast. Snag this computer and pass it onto?—”

When she faltered, I mumbled, “Grail.”

She clicked her fingers. “That’s it. Grail.”

“Like the Holy Grail?”

“Yup,” I said with a sigh. “She’d watched the third Indiana Jones movie so many times, she knew the script front to back. She got obsessed with Grail lore, had her own freakin’ diary like Sean Connery did in the movie as well.”

“Past tense?” Conor asked quietly.

“She’s not dead,” Troy answered. “Just crazy, changed her surname to Jones. Officially. Crazy. So Peyton Jones is an archaeologist now. Private.”

“She became a merc after she left the army, didn’t she?” I asked Troy.

“Yeah. She funds her own digs. Anyway, Star, here, was supposed to hand off this computer to Grail. Instead, she decides Grail’s no good?—”

“That’s not fair. She’d just lost her fucking dog and was crying all the time!”

“Yeah, but she was fit for work,” Troy argued. “Stop interrupting. I’m getting to the good shit. So, because Star thinks she’s an all-knowing, all-seeing benevolent being, she doesn’t hand it off and as she leaves, she gets caught with the computer on her person.

“Triggered a diplomatic incident until Dead To Me managed to put two bullets in the guards holding her.”

“Wow,” Conor breathed. “You do have control issues.”

My nose crinkled. “You knew that already.”

“Maybe. But not to that extent. I mean, I figured it was thanks to everything that happened with the Sparrows. But it’s not. It was before them. At work.”

“That’s just one job, Conor. If she weren't so fucking good, they’d have fired her ass. Plus, our team was one of the best.”

“Your team was all women?”

She chuckled. “We had a few guys along for the ride from time to time.”

“Remember Chad?” I asked with a smile.

“Yeah. He had it hard for Dead To Me.”

“She had it harder,” I retorted. “I know she has feelers out on him.”

“Why?”

“He went missing after he came back Stateside. You know how the sandbox fucks with people’s heads.”

“It’s criminal how we treat our veterans,” she stated grimly.

“True dat,” Conor concurred.

“The guys never stuck around for long. Creed did though. He was with us for a year.”

“Dead To Me liked him too, didn’t she?”

“They got caught fucking in a tank, Troy,” I retorted. “What do you think?”

“Hate fucking is totally a thing,” Troy retorted around a cackle, one that petered out into a long sigh. “They weren’t all shit times, were they? We had some laughs too.”

“We did,” I agreed. “It was only when Reggie left that things went to the dogs.”

“Regina was your CO, right?”

“She was,” I confirmed, answering Conor’s question. “She left and we started falling apart, got split up, and then I got captured. If I couldn’t trust my girls with half of the missions we were sent on, there was no way in fuck I could trust strangers.”

A soft, sad silence settled among us. It sank into my marrow— regrets . So many of them. Some days, I felt like I was drowning in them.

Conor cleared his throat, asking, “What’s our next step, then? Dagda?”

I frowned. “Why? I promised Aoife I wouldn’t kill him.”

“So kind of you,” he teased, lips curving into a wide grin. “I just thought you’d want him to confirm his involvement in your mother’s death.

"It's not like he’s going anywhere while he’s tied to a hospital bed. He can't run away from you, can he?”

“You think a man with his rep stays still for long?”

“He’s old, Star.”

“The only old spies are dead spies,” Troy intoned, but she was right.

You had to be reactionary in this life, no matter your age, or you’d end up in a coffin earlier than anticipated.

Unless the PTSD was bad like Maverick’s, you cared about dying ahead of time.

“Anyway,” Troy continued, “Star thinks Smythe was bullshitting.”

“He’d have told me that my dad was alive if he thought it would spare him.” I crumpled the Pixy Stix wrapper in my hand. “I should have fucked his face up even more for his audacity.”

Conor hitched a shoulder. “Wouldn’t you prefer to have confirmation from the guy who allegedly killed her?”

Perplexed by his blasé tone, I turned to him and queried, “Conor, how can you stand to be around him after everything? How don’t you want to strangle him?”

“That’s a dangerous question, Star.”

“Why?” Troy broke in to ask.

“Star… maneuvered things so that my father and another enemy of Dagda’s were at the same place at the same time. I’m sure you can imagine how that ended.”

Troy, never a jar short of cookies when it came to this stuff, snorted. “Cold, Star. Cold.”

“Which is why it’s a dangerous question.” Conor sighed. “My da had ALS. You’d have to know him to understand that a man like him could never be seen to be sick.”

“That’s very ableist of him,” was her pious retort.

“You can add it to the tons of other -ists that described him,” I mumbled under my breath.

Though Conor had to have heard me, he answered Troy, “It sounds as if it is, but it was more a survival mechanism.

“Think about it—he was the head of the Irish Mob. If he looked sick ever , someone would come for him. Then, they’d likely come for Ma and, when we were younger, his sons. The mafia underbelly is Darwinian bullshit at its finest.”

“That’s why you’re okay with Star arranging for him to be in a coffin?”

“Nice, Troy,” I spat, inwardly cringing at her wording.

“I’m not okay with it, but we’re working through it.”

“What is this? An episode of Dr. Phil ? I thought you said you didn’t do interventions, Star?”

“I never said I didn’t,” I retorted. “I just said that I don’t show up to them with SMGs!”

“I don’t even want to know,” Conor muttered as he switched on a radio station and set it on low. “Dagda did my da a favor. A debt is paid and he doesn’t have to suffer and be used as target practice by another faction who wouldn’t be as noble as a sniper in ending his life. That’s why I can be in the same room as him.

“If you’d asked me when he died, I wouldn’t have said that. I grieved him and you hard. But I wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer, and I’ve got you back.”

“God, pass me a barf bag,” Troy said, faking gagging.

Conor huffed but turned up the music even more.

When silence settled between us, a song filled in the gaps that conversations normally took. It gave me time to think about my situation, and that skewed guilt filtered through me as I reflected on what I’d done over the years.

I didn’t like Aidan Sr. I certainly didn’t like what he’d done to his son. Nor did I like how he treated his family, but my guilt wasn’t for the man—it was for Conor.

For what I’d done to his father.

Tentatively, half expecting him to shrug my hand off his lap, I let my fingers rest on his thigh.

When he cupped them, knotting our digits together, I breathed a little easier, finding comfort in anchoring myself to him.

Still, my voice was rough as I rasped, “I’m surprised your brothers haven’t set The Whistler on me.”

He arched a brow I only saw because of the gleam from the dash. “Someone had to die that day. The sins of the fathers can’t always be passed onto the sons.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Troy grumbled. “Are you purposely speaking in tongues?”

“Da gave Dagda his vengeance. He got him off our backs.”

“Why does Dagda have a hard-on for the Irish Mob?” Troy queried.

“Because they had his sister killed,” I muttered tiredly.

Troy whistled under her breath. “This is better than an episode of A Day of Our Lives .”

“Shut up,” I groused. “And I think you mean Days of Our Lives . If you’re going to bitch at me, get it right.”

She harrumphed. “This is prime-time TV shit here.”

“Not sure they’d air men getting their faces eaten off by animals before eight PM,” Conor drawled.

I had to snicker at his droll retort. “Yeah, we’ve become desensitized to violence but not by that much.”

“Not yet anyway,” Conor agreed with a chuckle.

“Okay, so, your da had Dagda’s—” She paused. “Wait. Lyra told me that Aoife is related to Dagda.”

“What? When? She doesn’t even talk.” I spluttered.

“She can talk,” Troy snapped. “It’s just easier for her to listen.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Let’s hope she becomes a teacher and not another spy. With that talent, she’s a shoo-in for the family firm.”

“So, Dagda is Aoife’s uncle, right?” Troy asked, otherwise ignoring me.

“Yeah,” Conor confirmed.

“Awkward.”

I grimaced. “Very awkward.”

“And your da killed Aoife’s mom, why?”

Before I could correct her, Conor cleared his throat. “To keep her quiet.”

Well, that was a lie.

Interesting.

“About?” Troy peppered.

Curious about where he was taking this when his ma was the one who’d killed Michelle Keegan, not his father, I waited for him to explain.

“Does it matter?” he grumbled. “This has nothing to do with our current situation.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Whatever led each of us to this point is pertinent to our current situation.”

He huffed. “Dagda is the head of the ECD.”

“Those IRA psychos that take extremism to the nth degree?”

“Those are the ones,” I confirmed.

“Now you get involved,” he groused at me. “When Dagda was in prison, he maintained his position in the ECD, but a Five Pointer, a guy we trusted, wanted to take over the group. Da helped him.”

“And they used his sister as leverage?”

“Yeah,” Conor lied.

“Huh. You know, the first family get-together needs to be televised because I have to watch this showdown.”

“Shut up, Troy,” I retorted, uncomfortable with her mockery because I’d had a part in causing this chaos and it was only coming to light because of my meddling.

Plus, I’d inadvertently shit in my own bed because they were my family now.

Conor had opened his arms to me no matter what I’d done in the past and he’d offered me acceptance.

I already knew that I was a moron—this just confirmed it.

She heaved a sigh, but thank God she stayed quiet because, suddenly, his lies made sense.

For whatever reason, Dagda believed that Aidan Sr. was behind his sister’s murder, not Lena O’Donnelly, and seeing as his da was dead and his ma wasn’t, Conor obviously wanted to perpetuate the lie.

As silence fell among us again, I let my mind drift onto the topic of the moment—not by one iota did I believe that my mother was alive, but maybe Conor was right. Talking with Dagda might be the one thing I’d never had until now.

Closure.

I’d never found any justification for her death, and that made sense. If it was a Jorgmundgander operation and her identity was as wiped as the snakes could make it, the only person with some answers was the man who pulled the trigger.

Maybe closure was why Conor could forgive me?

He had that with his da’s passing.

His father, never a man to accept anyone controlling his fate, had died on his own terms…

“Okay.” When Conor shot me a quick look, I stated, “I’ll see Dagda.”

“I’ll let Finn know you want to speak with him.”

“Why Finn?”

“He’ll tell us when Dagda wakes up and is able to talk.” He laid his hand on my knee this time.

The gesture went deeper than he could imagine.

I didn’t know if I’d have been able to forgive me for my trespasses against his family, but maybe that was just proof Conor was a better person than I was.

When he squeezed me there, pulsing his fingers twice, gently, I slipped my hand over his, a welter of gratitude filling me.

He was too generous with himself. Too kind and loving with those he considered his own.

I’d let him down so badly, his family, the only people who mattered to him, too, and…

I gritted my teeth.

I couldn’t control the past. I couldn’t change it. But I could make a difference going forward.

I’d be the best ‘insert label ’ that Conor could ever have.

Unaware of my thoughts, mistaking my internal tension and assuming it revolved around the situation with my mother, he murmured, “Dagda might have nothing to add to the narrative you’ve got in your head, but it’s better to know, isn’t it?”

That was the thing—the ‘narrative’ I had on my mother’s death was riddled with plot holes.

I guessed it was time to fill in the gaps.